Just back from our meeting..hic 🙂

The core of our small group have decided to form a road club – Leighton Buzzard Road Cycling Club, LBRCC.
It’ll encompass road racing and all road related cycling, Cyclo-Cross and MTB. Even though there’s just eight of us we are already racing road and cross.

Anyroadup, any proper useful advice from those that have been there and done that?

bossard wheelers still going in LB

bossard wheelers still going in LB

Just one man now I believe,I’ve tried to contact him actually.

Well done – hope it takes off.

Got a bit of a website going on here, just a few days old though.
There’s a little clip of where race, a map of the last ride etc etc.
Do you think it’s okay.

The picture content is temporary, that’ll change when we get kit and some images.

http://www.lbrcc.co.uk

Site looks good 😉

Register the club name and colours with BC (but then I suspect you knew that already).
Get more people to join it.
Have fun.

🙂

Oh and well done on getting it set up, best of luck to you all.

Are you LBRCC or LBCC? The logo seems to suggest the latter but everything else(URL/text) suggests the former. Otherwise looks good, I’m not a million miles away from Leighton Buzzard and wish you the best of luck with getting off the ground.

Join the CTC (as a club) and get insurance – it will cover third party plus ride leaders i think. Although this may well be covered by your BC membership.

Check the data protection act and make sure your database of members details complies (it won’t be an issue as its quite open for clubs).

Consider doing memberships via paypal as its a lot easier to manage than via forms/mail etc.

Have regular committee meetings in pubs.

Do a club magazine to keep people in touch, also acts as a prompt to renew annual memberships.

Organise a race (best way to promote club in local cycling community).

Have some more committee meetings in pubs.

Ride bikes lots.

Ah yes it’s a breakaway from LBCC which is an ‘open’ club that was formed when Leighton Buzzard became a cycling town. We felt the sports side was a little lost in the bigger picture.
And we need to insert an R.

From small acorns as they say.
We have gone from this; http://domain2570134.sites.streamlinedns.co.uk/
To this in a very short period of time;
http://www.southwestscotlandcyclingproject.com/swscp_race_series__c.html
With some not inconsiderable help from Scottish Cycling, D&G Council and others in particular Alan Denman our SC dev coach.

Good luck oldgit

Club kit design – yay or nay? The bright green is a ‘nod’ to tyhe old Leighton club ‘Bossard Wheelers’

that’s one ugly jersey, but then most road club jerseys are.

Well you can’t join us then so ner.

based on my experiences.

join ctc or bc for insurance.

no rules or absolute minimum

ban anyone who seems to be trying to add rules.or wants to be important/powerful in the club

ban miserable feckers

Well you can’t join us then so ner.

well i wasn’t looking for a second claim club or to move to leighton buzzard. 🙂

Not a bad looking kit actually.

ban anyone who seems to be trying to add rules.or wants to be important/powerful in the club

ban miserable feckers

I join a club which sort of fell apart when the main movers decided not to speak to each other

The next one I joined subscribed to rule 1 above. So I left.

I’ll not be joining any more clubs – I have enough pettiness to deal with at work, and I really can’t be bothered at the weekends.

Nice one, Carl.

Kit is nicer than I imagined when you described it the other day, though lime green never has gone with my “strawberry blond” complexion…. 😉

Some good advice up there, especially about BC affiliations.

On rules – the secret is to keep them simple. Right now, you’re too small to have to worry. However, as your membership grows, you’ll need to think about some formalisation of certain things (like annual meetings, and elections of officers). As and when you get to that point, let me know (I was sectreary of my club and the last thing i did was get through a load of changes to an otherwise appalling set of rules).

Also consider whether you want the club ever to achieve Go Ride status. There are certain constitutional requirements about this. Again, for another day, I suspect.

If you want any points on any of that sort of stuff any time, drop me a line.

Have you let all the local bike shops know of your existence? And asked to put adverts up in their windows? I reckon that’s where you’d get most of your members.

8 members? sounds a bit cliquey to me1 😉

O n rules – the secret is to keep them simple.
Right now, you’re too small to have to worry.
However, as your membership grows, you’ll
need to think about some formalisation of
certain things (like annual meetings, and
elections of officers). As and when you get to
that point, let me know (I was sectreary of my
club and the last thing i did was get through a
load of changes to an otherwise appalling set of
rules).

not necessarily. no agm, no official positions for us. collective responsibility and people organise what they want to do. working well for over 5 years now.

One of our sponsors is a mobile outfit MBRSUK.

We had ten out on Sunday, and out sites been going bonkers in the last few days, there really is/was a gap for a road club here.

not necessarily. no agm, no official positions for us. collective responsibility and people organise what they want to do. working well for over 5 years now

Hang on I was told we need officials if we are BC affiliated…have I been tucked up good and proper?

I think that kit looks alright.

Who do you ride with MrSmith?

oldgit – I’m sure that we said we had people in whatever positions the blazers said we had to. doesn’t actually mean we actively did though..

All I’m trying to say really is that you don’t have to follow the old formula for a club. do what you think will work for you.

not necessarily. no agm, no official positions for us. collective responsibility and people organise what they want to do. working well for over 5 years now.

Depends on the club, its history etc.

In the case of my lot (Manchester Wheelers) we’re 128 years old and are reasonably sizeable (c250 members). There’s a lot of legacy, and there’s still an old guard who are proud to remain members (hey, we’re proud to have them – some were handy riders in their time). So rules, etc. have become well ingrained.

I spent a couple of years on the committee, latterly as secretary, and some of the rules (especially the unwritten ones) were a PITA. But others were really helpful – especially when keeping the old guard in line..!

Who do you ride with MrSmith?

CS Grupetto. not a normal club either, small and only a few years old, the only rules are nobody gets left behind. the club ran a track meet at herne hill last weekend which was a great success (club is not really big enough to run a road race event and supply enough marshals).
one of the racers is currently 3rd in points rankings and took 4th in the national 25.
best looking jersey too, sky and leopardTrek copied it. 🙂

omitn, different scenario of course. I’m talking about a new club as per the op. big.membership isn’t always the right thing for every club to aim for.

big.membership isn’t always the right thing for every club to aim for.

Absolutely. Esp if racing – a smaller outfit is much more focussed on that.

It’s just a legacy of history and being a Manchester based club with “Manchester” in the name – get’s an early hit on google…

This has been time consuming 😯
Just one month since I posted, numbers are now 17 paid up, but with lots of interest.
Kits here soon. BC affiliation is almost done, We have two Sky Ride coaches, Application for level 2 Go-Ride coaching, met with Triathlon England Wednesday about affiliation, met with Go-Ride reps yesterday, then met with female cycling coach about developing that side of the sport.
Kit here this month, open day arranged, reliability trial sorted and being promoted, article done for cycling weekly and now currently planning our first cyclo cross race.
The clubs riding four times a week and members are racing on a regular basis.
But I’m not a grumpy roadie…yet

BTW I’d love to see some local STWers on out reliability trial in November or the open day in August.

Site looks pretty slick and well populated so far though. Well done!

And to justify posting on a mountainbike forum, it looks like we might incorporate a local well established mountainbike group. Some of the younger MTBers want to race and ride enduros or both. Plus I’m trying to arrange a deal to incorporate all the local off road permits into our membership fee.

I thought this interseting. None of the road riders own mountainbikes, but nearly all the MTBers own road bikes?

Hot off the press.

We now have two Watt bikes coming our way. And track session dates are being finalised.

Sort of a next chapter. Our kit arrived last Thursday, and to mark it’s arrival we had two guys TT’ing and one road racing. Who I believe picked up 2 points.
Today, Sunday we had 19 on our club run.
But chuffed about the points from the 3/4 race.

Very well done for doing this in LB – I always found it a small town with a small town mentality! Anything new has to be good.

Cheers TooTall, where abouts are you then?

Ahh Bristol way I guess.